Today, WBO/WBA/IBF Light Heavyweight champion Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev who was in Texas attending the Canelo-Smith event and promoting his upcoming fight against Andre Ward, got into some trouble when he told USA Olympic Gold Medalist Claressa Shields “Women shouldn’t be fighting, they should be at home”. Later in another interview, he said “If women want to fight that’s ok, but I don’t like to see women boxing” Kovalev said it was hard for him to express his opinion because he has limited vocabulary in English (he is Russian) but his opinion was clear, and as much as he is entitled to it, it certainly carries a lot of weight, especially because it comes from a fellow boxer, another athlete. Considering the fact that his promoter, Kathy Duva (Main Events) is a woman, one would expect that perhaps he was just having trouble picking his words, but when the reporter asked him that specifically, he responded “Kathy doesn’t fight in the ring, she fights outside the ring making a comfortable atmosphere for me; she is fighting out of the ring”. So it seems that Kovalev’s issue has to do more with Women taking part in combat sports.

Unfortunately Kovalev’s opinion mirrors that of many other man and even women that don’t like seeing women taking part in combat sports, whether that is boxing, MMA, karate, judo, kickboxing, etc.

Costa Rica’s Hanna Gabriels is the WBO/WBA World Female Super Welterweight Champion, and many of us that follow her facebook have witnessed how she’s had to defend herself in several occasions from obnoxious comments from people expressing the same opinion as Kovalev.

Female boxers and female athletes in general usually receive less pay than men, even under equal conditions and if they have the exact same recognitions; so in other words, if you have a male world champion such as Sergey Kovalev who is undefeated and has defended his titles successfully several times, he could be making north of $750,000 dollars in purse plus television rights; meanwhile a female world champion with the same conditions such as Cecilia Braekhus can make probably a 50% of that.
Sure… television ratings, etc. we’ve all heard the multiple “reasons” behind the difference in pay, it’s still not fair, furthermore if the ratings for female boxing are not good enough to deserve equal pay then that means there’s a lot of people that still today share Kovalev’s opinion and simply don’t enjoy watching women in combat sports. That would make sense … except that Ronda Rousey, Cecilia Braekhus, Holly Holm, and locally Hanna Gabriels who’s had record ratings when her fights are shown in Costa Rica, prove that point to be wrong.

There’s professional female boxers, MMA fighters, and martial artists working out every day in gyms all across the world, preparing themselves to hold a fight in the ring just the same as all women do every day outside the ring, and for less money, that deserves credit, and more so, respect.